


small eternities

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: 500 Words Challenge, AU a new hope, Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Mutual Pining, Prompt Fic, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, reduced age gap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26206639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: A princess. A spy. Fifty moments and the love that spans the silence between.A set of 500-word prompts based off creativechee's "mircostory" list.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Leia Organa
Comments: 21
Kudos: 8





	1. don't leave

**Author's Note:**

> I've always been amazed and slightly terrified of the idea of a mirco-story with a firm word-count limit. But, I've decided to undertake this project for my favorite ship.  
> They'll be loosely set in the same universe, hopefully chronological, and very hopefully updated often. They stand alone from my other cassleias.
> 
> I do very much hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoy challenging myself to write them.

1.

The view from the Tantive IV is no longer that of the blankness of hyperspace. Instead, Leia sees all of Yavin’s system before her. She focuses not on the small blue-green speck that holds all of the Rebellion’s hope, but instead the gas giant it orbits. Her eyes follow the slow-moving storm clouds, which look no larger than a transport ship, and yet, were three times the size of Alderaan. The tempest could engulf her entire world as easily as a cairoka bird could swallow a moth.

So many things, Leia thinks, are like those massive red storms. So small at first glance, and so overwhelming to comprehend.

Like the data card in her hand, small enough to be tucked into her sleeve and thin enough for the light to shine through it. Her thumb traces its edges, feeling the cold metallic surface, and somehow, feeling so much more than that, as if she had been there on Scarif. As if she’d find sand beneath her nails and wounds on her skin.

But no. She had been safe, here on her ship. Here, in the eye of the storm.

She slides the data card back into the safety of a hidden pocket inside her ivory sleeve. Twenty more minutes.

Twenty minutes, then, the Death Star plans would be safely in the hands of the Council.

Twenty minutes, then, she could rest.

Or at least, she could try to rest, if the storm did not pull her under, as it had every time she’d closed her eyes in the past two standard days. Memories that were not hers, thoughts she’d never asked for, swirled within her mind, making rest impossible. And the voices that called to her, that called out for her, sounded so much like her parents, keeping her awake, watching, and waiting. Waiting for the storm to pass. Wondering if it was only just beginning.

Twenty minutes. Then, the Death Star would be destroyed.

A feat impossible without the tiny data card. Such a small item, won at so high a cost. Leia knows peace is a thing that can only be purchased at the highest of all costs. War demands a tariff paid in blood and death.

But Leia hadn’t expected to be the merchant who named those prices. Leia hadn’t asked to be anyone’s savior any more than she’d asked to be someone’s executioner.

And yet, she’d had to be both, there above Scarif.

They hadn’t been able to save everyone.

They shouldn’t have even tried.

But they had.

If the Death Star plans were needed to save other lives, were they worth it if they could only be bought with the same cost? Leia thinks all of these things, as she stares out at the storm ahead and the survivor stands behind her, waiting for an answer.

Waiting for twenty minutes more.

Waiting for such a small eternity.

Twenty minutes, then the question would be answered for them.

“Don’t leave,” Leia tells Cassian. “Not now.”


	2. this was a mistake

A princess does not often ask for small things. Not when so much is already given to her. Not when her duties require her to ask the largest gifts a being can offer.

Trust. Promises. Even one’s life.

Leia has asked for all of these from her subjects. Worse, she’s asked them of her friends, and even the man she’d hoped to call her love. And she’d offered so little in return.

Now, she stands in front of him, her request--the one she should have never voiced-- hanging between them like a ship suddenly fallen from hyperspace.

Cassian clears his throat. The bacta patches peppering his skin shift. But he standing at attention, though adorned with crutches and a sling, does not. Even his injuries will not break his performance of a perfect soldier.

Leia whispers his name. That too, is a request, almost as great as the one before. Asking him to grant her that thing which is so difficult for a spy, and easy for a normal man. To say his name is to ask him to be himself. Not a disguise. Not anything else but the young man from Fest she had met years ago.

His glance toward her is nearly imperceptible, and yet, she sees it. They could always catch those small things they’d hid from others. A half-smile, a blinked away tear, a hand outstretched, but never touching.. For them, those tiny gestures spoke all that she’d never be able to say to him.

Yet, Leia dares, with only a few minutes before they’ll dock, to speak. “Stay,” she asks. “Don’t take the mission.”

“How could you ask that?” his voice, raspy from his injuries, somehow stays gentle.

How could she not? Because she’s selfish. Because losing him once had nearly killed her. Because she’ll never be strong enough to ask the ones she loves to give their lives to a cause that can never love them back.

A lie as welcome as a warm bed comes to her. “You’re injured.” Her voice, unlike his, is frigid, cold enough to freeze a heart. A princess, like a spy, is not often allowed to be herself. “You’re in no condition to take a new mission.”

“Kaytu will be doing the work. I’m the--”

The bait. He would be the bait. The Imperials would come after the survivors of Scarif, to finish what had been started. He would go far from Yavin, far from her, to lure some of the ships away from the Death Star.

“This was a mistake,” Leia says suddenly. Better to save him by breaking his heart, than lose him through her love.

“What? Saving my life?”

“No,” she says. “Just this.” What she means is _us._

“It wasn’t always,” he replies.

No, it wasn’t. And that is what makes _this_ , Leia thinks, all the more difficult.

Leia stares out at the empty space beyond her, so that she doesn’t see him leave, though the closing door echoes in her empty heart.


	3. before: I trusted you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll use "before:" as a way to show flashback chapters.

3.

Above Alderaan’s palace, there is peace. Not the galaxy-spanning peace her papa fights for, nor the boring peace she hears about from the advisors training her to become queen. But a simple, selfish peace. It’s the same peace Leia’s found in her hand-to-hand combat lessons and her drills at the shooting range. All of the things her mother scoffs at, saying a princess has no need. But Leia doesn’t want that title. Not now, when she’s a hot-headed teenager, full of rage against an empire that she swears she’ll bring down herself.

Though she’d hate to do so alone. It’s a threat that Leia makes when she’s frustrated with her parents’ rules, not one she wishes to carry out. So often, Leia wishes she isn’t so alone.

And yet, she is alone.

Even now, as she scrapes out one small bit of freedom, squeezed into the old star fighter’s cockpit, she still feels alone. She has no mission, no goal. Instead, she pursues freedom, an impossible, elusive target.

But tomorrow… she will seek, and for once, she will find her answers.

Now, she lets her senses guide her as she tears through the atmosphere. Sometimes, she feels as if there’s someone racing here, high in the clouds. Someone with an easy laugh and a warm smile. Someone she wishes she could call brother. Someone who would keep her company. Once in a while, she’s sure he cheers, as if he’s just landed some wild flight trick.

Leia cheers with him then, whoever he might be, and hopes he hears her.

Even more foolishly, she hopes she might meet him. Perhaps someday. Perhaps in the Rebellion.

Perhaps after tomorrow, when her life would begin.

That night, she goes through the motions of dutiful daughter. The loneliness that follows her through the palace, as it always does, nips at her heels, but for once, she ignores it. Her papa even comments on how well-behaved she is, which makes the knife of guilt twist once more. The Rebellion needs her. Even more so, she _needs_ the Rebellion. She needs an escape, a chance to change the galaxy, a freedom she’ll never find here on Alderaan.

That night, she packs her bags, braids her hair, and agonizes over a note to have Artoo record for her mother. Then, Leia sneaks through the halls. Cassian promised he’d be waiting. He promised that, with her father’s blessing, he’d bring her with him to the Rebel base. 

Even if Leia had perhaps _altered_ the truth when she’d told Cassian she had the blessing.

But it was a small lie in comparison to the great good she could do.

Until she’s standing in the rendezvous spot, staring at Cassian, who is not alone. Her father waits next to him, arms crossed, jaw set.

“I trusted you,” she hates the tears that come with the words.

“You should have never trusted a spy,” Cassian replies.

Leia realizes then she will never find peace in love, only in loneliness. 


	4. one chance

One chance. One choice.

How many times had those words defined Leia’s life? How many more times would they? Until there is peace, and maybe, not even then, given how many times she’d had to make a terrible choice in the middle of an otherwise peaceful day. Like she had, when she’d received the distress call from a ship with the call sign of Rogue One. A choice to land, rather than ignore the call. They’d only had time to save one, to take the plans and him, nothing else.

One chance.

One choice.

The Rebellion has been woven from those things, twinned moments of hope and failure. Leia knew the bitter sting of despair almost as well as the sweet bliss of success.Though her parents had raised her never to be a gambler, she’d watched her father bet against the odds for countless missions. Leia too, gambled with the highest stakes of all; not credits, but lives.

There had been no more time to wonder if she’d chosen wrong, once they’d landed on Yavin IV. Cassian had left, moving slowly toward his next mission. And Leia?

She’d known what had been expected, yes, though she’d never chosen it. When she’d joined the Rebellion, years after that night on Alderaan, she’d expected to fight. She’d never expected to be a figurehead. Figureheads could never see combat. They needed to remain strong and calm and collected, as if completely unaware of the risks ahead. They needed to be stronger than all of those emotions, strong enough to lead against terrible odds.

Figureheads needed to be perfect.

Leia knows, with every beat of her stubborn heart, she is not.

Which is why Leia, today, chose otherwise.

One choice, one chance. Leia had made hers, there in the command room of the Massassi temple, chosen to _not_ be a figurehead, to _not_ remain behind like a living ghost. Leia would fight. Leia would live.

Even without Cassian.

Because she’d saved him only to lose him.

Now, the time for choices is over. Leia sits in the tiny cockpit, hands on steering devices barely familiar to her, and heart battering her ribs. When she closes her eyes, the map of the singular weakness appears once more. Such a small target. Such massive stakes.

She’s been here before. Not circling the Death Star, no, but here, in the place one finds only after making the hardest choices with the clearest head

She was here, she thinks, the first time she ever kissed Cassian.

She was here, she knows, the day she told him goodbye.

Now, she’s here. Alone. Feeling everything and knowing nothing. Risking her life, perhaps even risking the Rebellion, and it has nothing and everything to do with him.

“When you detach…” Hera’s voice is both gentle and firm as it echoes from the comm link.

“I know.”

One chance.

There’s too many singular chances in life.

She shouldn’t be here.

But she is.

One shot.

Leia closes her eyes, and fires.


	5. help

Leia has gotten used to not having what she wants. Safety. Love. A long nap. She’s sacrificed the longing for all of those things on the altar of the Rebellion.

Now, she wonders if she’ll be asked to sacrifice more.

As soon as she fires, Leia’s instincts--instincts she had no idea she even had--take over, pulling the Phantom out of the narrow trench and into the empty space above the the Death Star. She moves as if she’s no more than one of the blue pulsing dots on the plans she had been reviewing until this moment. 

The plans Cassian had nearly died to retrieve.

Wouldn’t that be poetic justice then, if the deployment of those plans caused her own death?

The bitter justice would make any ancient poet happy. Leia grimaces with the thought as she tugs the ship into a spin she can barely control, trying to lose the TIE-Fighters tailing her.

When the Death Star explodes, the wave of debris slam into her tiny ship like the ocean against a child’s sand-fort. Her ship tumbles, carried along by the massive destruction she’d caused. A moment later, silence reigns. 

Leia tries to start the jump calculations. 

Nothing.

A blinking signals the hyperdrive has been damaged in the blast. The battle is over, the threat destroyed… and yet, she is far from safe. Any errant TIE would be circling the debris. They couldn’t jump to hyperspace any more than Leia. She's a sitting mynock.

Leia’s heart thuds against her ribs. She presses the comm buttons, desperately trying to reach Yavin IV. But the damage has knocked out all but the local communications, which are useless. There are no Rebel ships nearby.

Because they’ve all made the jump. Because that’s what the plan told them to do.

Leia knows, because she was the one to make the plan in the first place. She closes her eyes, reaching out with her intuition that’s far too strong to be labeled with such a simple word, wishing for someone, anyone, to answer her distress call.

A soft, certain chorus takes over, drowning out her heartbeat. 

_I love him. I love him. I love him._

She will die, here amid the debris of the planet-killing battle station, and never tell Cassian all she should have said. She will die, and he will live. Perhaps that’s what poets would call balance.

But Leia wants to live. She wants a hundred thousand things, a multitude of small desires. She wants a wedding bouquet made of starblossoms, a bedroom that’s only complete when his old boots are on the shelf next to her delicate slippers, a child with her family’s traditions and his smile.

Leia wants and she wants and she wants.

The local comm crackles to life. “Need some help?”

“Cassian!” Leia sits upright, her smallest dreams blossoming into fragile reality. In that moment, all her wants condense into the simplest want of all: him.

For once, the universe allows her that small wish.


	6. illusion

Missions come easy to Cassian. Or at least, easier than the space between the missions, that dead time others lived for. That other time, when he needed to be himself, (or something as close to himself as he could possibly be), and when he couldn’t hide behind a disguise or a cause or a code. When he had to come home, and feel the relief of such a word, followed by the sudden sharp fear of losing that thing again. When he was tempted by the illusion of normalcy and sung to by the sweet whispers of dreaming.

Now, though, the mission is over. Or at least, the latest mission. There’d be another one, soon, he had no doubt.

There would always be another mission.

Home would always be a lure, guiding him back, but it would never be a place solid enough to build upon. There would always be another mission. His dreams would never be more than dreams. Cassian thinks of this while he waits for Leia’s tiny shuttle to finish the docking process. Then, when she is there, in the doorway, he can think of nothing at all.

She doesn't stay in the doorway for long.

One, two, three steps, and then, suddenly, (yet, far too slowly) she’s in his arms. Her heartbeat is loud, so loud, in his quiet ship. Loud enough that it reminds him this isn’t a dream.

Loud enough that he wishes it was.

Because if this was just an illusion, then life would be simpler. Then nothing would get in the way of missions. Nothing would stop him from returning to the base he calls home.

Nothing would change between him and the woman he might have loved, had the times and places and meetings between them been different.

Leia’s heartbeat sets a rhythm his can’t follow, reminds him this is reality, with all its bitter-laced joy. This is real. These are the lives they’ve chosen.

The princess and the spy.

The figurehead and the Fulcrum.

They’re two sides of the same coin, the motive and the mission, the speech and the action that follows.

He rests his chin on top of her head, breathes in the scent of her delicate star-blossom perfume and the ozone of the brave missile she’s fired. She’s made of both; she’s all that he wants to protect and all that he wants to fight beside.

She’s impossible, and so is this moment between them. There will be another mission. If not now, then soon. He steps back, his booted feet making no noise. His hand reaches out, but doesn’t quite caress her cheek.

His breath catches, but his words aren’t quite heard.

His eyes burn but tears never quite fall.

“We’ll be home soon,” he says, though that phrase means one thing here, and quite a different one in the dreams he’s never shared.

Even though _home_ is nothing more than the place he waits for the next mission.

Home is, after all, his favorite illusion.


	7. silent fury

When Leia was a little girl, she’d desperately wanted a pet. Ideally, a bantha, but she’d told her father she’d settle for something much smaller, like perhaps a gundark. Even the aquatic variety of gundark would do, as long as it was hers. She’d promised to train it, to take good care of it, and help it grow up to be big and strong.

She’d never gotten a pet.

What Leia had been given, had learned how to nourish, was her anger. Bail taught her how to train it, how to only break down something if one knew a way to rebuild it stronger. But he never told her not to be angry, never told her not to feel all the injustice in the galaxy as strongly as she did. He’d given her permission to be angry, when no other emotion would do. 

Her anger stays with her now, a constant companion, keeping her focused on what lies ahead, just as surely as if it could nip at her heels. Sometimes it rages, making her lift her voice and ball her fists. Other times it simmers, a steady low boil that keeps her awake long after those around her have fallen asleep. Still other times, it hums to her, a soft, steady rhythm that she can use to time her blaster fire or aim her punches. Her anger is many things, taking on as many shapes as the air around her can. But it’s never cruel, never mocking. She fights, yes, but only for that day that she can put her anger to bed, quell it and have no need to wake it once more.

That day, though, seems further away now than ever, as they stand near the cockpit, Cassian’s arm around her shoulder, offering support she’s not sure she needs and comfort she’s not sure she deserves. The latest transmission from Base One plays through the projector, though Leia is barely listening at all. Dodonna’s words echo hollowly.  _ “Fulcrum, you are ordered to retreat. Do NOT rendezvous with others evacuating Base One. Your mission is to survive, and if possible, recruit others to the cause.” _

To survive? Leia’s fists clench. Hasn’t Cassian done that enough? Hasn’t he given enough? How many times will they ask him to claw his way back to the Alliance, and fight for them once more?  She glances over at him, sees him still leaning on crutches, the wounds on his face still not healed. “How dare he.” Her words are frigid, as icy as her posture’s become. 

“I need to follow orders,” Cassian says.

“You need to heal.” She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t need to. The frozen anger in her voice conveys all that she feels. Though her anger can be many things, it is at its strongest when it has crystallized into silent fury.

Leia pushes through the holo like she’d shove past someone blocking her way. “Kaytu,” she calls to the droid currently in the pilot’s seat. “Set course for Alderaan.”


End file.
